In a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system or a Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) system, certain sub-frames of a radio frame may be configured as Multicast Broadcast Single Frequency Network (MBSFN) sub-frames. A MBSFN sub-frame may be an idle sub-frame, namely, a serviceless MBSFN sub-frame; or a non-idle sub-frame, namely, an MBSFN sub-frame used for transmitting services.
Because the quantity of Common Reference Signals (CRSs) in a MBSFN sub-frame is less than that of the CRSs in an ordinary sub-frame (such as a unicast sub-frame), the transmission time is reduced. Meanwhile, when no CRS needs to be sent, a Power Amplifier (PA) in the corresponding Packet Switched (PS) domain may be shut down to save power, thereby saving energy.
However, after MBSFN sub-frames are configured in the system, the service sub-frame resources are more centralized. Therefore, with the MBSFN sub-frames being used to save energy of the system, if all neighboring cells are using MBSFN sub-frames to save energy, the probability of generating interference at the edge of the cell increases, and the spectrum efficiency is reduced.